Andrea takes a peek at the papers too. Knowing Italian and being a huge fucking nerd he recognises some of the words. “Dude, this is latin! Whoever lived here was faaaaancy. Who the hell writes in latin?” The papers don’t look nearly old enough to be like… from when latin was spoken, it’s regular paper not crumbling old vellum. Though the paper does look old.

Honestly the most valuable thing in the room might be the antique desk and the display case. Big solid heavy wooden furniture was worth a lot, especially antiques. How would he even manage to sell it though… it’s at the bottom of a magic basement hole. How did the furniture even get down here? “How… did they get all this down the ladder?”

"Hell if I know. Maybe there's another invisible wall or something. I bet whoever built this place was one of those rich old guys obsessed with LARPing as a Roman senator or something... that doesn't explain the invisible wall, though!"

Ennis looks over the statues and walks toward the display case. "I think he really liked Hermes. He's even got the staff and everything!"

Does the display case open easily? Is it locked?

All it has is a nice shiny bronze latch to keep it closed. The case will unlatch and swing open easily.

“Ohhhh yeah I knew I recognised it, hermes staff, cade-thingy.” He’s not mentioning that he’s recognising it visually from disney’s animated film Hercules.

”I mean… It’s like platform 9 and 3/4. It’s a magic wall. Its not a hologram, this place has no power. And like, where we are should be inside the fireplace, thats some space warpy craziness.” Andrea is pretty excited about the magic/dr who stuff in real life, he would be more excited without the broken bone though.

"Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I guess it could be magic, but I really hope we aren't living in Harry Potter or something..." Ennis sounds somewhat doubtful.

He unlatches the case. The caduceus looks unnaturally smooth, the wood hasn't decayed at all and no dust stains its surface. "I'm going to start collecting everything that looks like it could valuable."

Ennis carefully reaches out and grabs the staff.

As soon as he grips the staff, he becomes aware of everything going on in his body. Each pulse of blood in his vessels, his muscles tensing and relaxing all over his body, even the bacteria in his gut breaking down what he had for breakfast. It’s not a visual sense, but if this were a comic book it would be portrayed as having MRI/xray vision into your whole body. Down to the smallest detail of your biology.

Andrea leans over to read the plaque on the case. “Staff of… change? I think? I don’t speak latin I’m just guessing from common root words.”

Ennis can see everything. Every organ, every muscle, every bone, a cacophony of living and dying and living aga—

He screams and stumbles backwards. The staff clatters to the ground and his senses go back to normal. He keels over and vomits a little before he manages to get himself under control.

"W-wh-at the fuuuck..."

“What? What happened? You okay man?” Oh gosh, please be okay. Theres the usual amount of not wanting people to hurt, but also he's thinking he’s definitely gonna need help getting up that ladder. Plus, Ennis seemed nice. It sucks even more when nice people hurt.

"I-I think I'm okayyy... pick up the staff and tell me if you see anything." Ennis is shaking, it looks like he's in shock.

Andrea looks meaningfully at his broken foot. And waits for Ennis to hand him the staff. If he had to crawl over there it would hurt SO BAD.

Ennis hesitates for a few seconds, takes a deep breath, and picks up the staff again.

It's not quite as overwhelming this time, and after a few seconds of holding on his external senses start working again. It's still hard to see things outside of his body properly, he can see so much more inside than outside.

"Brace yourself." He hands the staff to Anders.

Andrea takes the staff. And he is AWARE, of everything inside him. He’s used to filtering out sensations that upset him but this is so much. He can feel/sense a bowel movement and all the bacteria inside it moving down his body in excruciating detail and that is so absolutely gross, oh god bodies are disgusting his body is disgusting. Andrea practically flings the staff out of his hand. “Ew ew ew what the fuck, WHAT THE FUCK.”

"Well. I wasn't hallucinating, unless this entire day has been a hallucination. I... think your 'magic' guess might be a little more likely now."

Ughhh his body is so gross he hates this. But also, MAGIC STAFF! “So like… are we wizards now? That’s a magic staff. These might be magic notes. Inside a magic fake wall.” ANDREA HAS BEEN WAITING FOR HIS HOGWARTS LETTER HIS WHOLE LIFE! This is almost as good. He would have disregarded any magic claims at all as stupid an hour ago, but he is very sure he isn’t hallucinating falling and breaking his leg and inventing an entire person called Ennis who can also see this.

"I don't know if having a magic staff makes us wizards, exactly. Are the notes actually magic? I can't read Latin... if I pass some more notes to you, can you try and figure out what the staff does other than make me throw up?"

Ah, Ennis must have seen how gross his insides were too. God he had never understood OCD hyper cleanliness people until now. He was so aware of how much was living inside him now. But you Couldn’t clean your insides!

”Uhhhh theres a lot of papers? And books? Maybe just look for the same words that are on the case?” This might take a while. Well they were waiting out the storm anyway, and then the night probably. Got nothing but time and nothing better to do.

To Ennis, everything feels a little surreal right now. He had a plan for his life, before today. It was a great plan, with a great many steps, and it would have probably worked well enough. He had known what he had wanted to do since he was twelve, and almost everything he has done since then has been working towards that. He does not have a plan for his life anymore. What do you do, when everything feels like it was a lie from the start?

He takes a while collecting up all the papers and books and tries to help Anders sort through them.

Eventually after a LOT of searching, so much searching, they find a few loose pages, and a journal, with the same words as on the display case. Andrea, guessing just from root words tries to guess rough meanings. 

“Uhhhh staff of… I’m pretty sure this means change or changing. Maybe something about something being fixed? As in fixed in place, english really needs to stop recycling words for different meanings. Something something alone… don’t alone! Something something don’t alone. Don’t use it too much? Don’t use it without supervision? I’m really just guessing here, I don’t know the sentence structure even if I can guess at some word roots. I never took Latin, I don’t even think my school had Latin. I’m not even sure all the words are latin, some of these roots look greek to me and I don’t know any greek besides whats used for science terms.”

"It... does it change people? Into what? And why the really awful body-sensing? If there are any wizards left to supervise us they haven't made themselves known yet, we're probably on our own as far as figuring out how this thing works. Maybe if I think about 'change' really hard while holding the staff it'll do something..."

Ennis picks up the staff (eww) and thinks about 'change' and 'changing'. Is the staff going to do anything other than the body-sense this time?

Well, what does he focus on changing? If he focuses on any particular area he can see under the body sensing… and an effect…

Uhh... well he's focused on the staff, not his body, but he is feeling the staff through his right hand? Does that count?

Oh so he wants his hand to become like the staff? That’s obviously what he meant. Lets have some fingers start melding together and becoming made of the same gnarled wood the staff is made from. Throw in the magical body hyper awareness of every change happening to the fingers in real time for good measure.

“Ennis your hand!” That’s fucking terrifying! Andrea hopes it stops and this guy doesn't end up an ent or something!

ahh! AHH! MY HAND! STOP! STOP CHANGING! WHERE'S THE OFF BUTTON ON THIS THING!?

Ennis is doing some very high-pitched screaming. He tries to drop the staff but at this point it's fused with his hand. Does panicking really hard stop the transformation?